I uploaded a few new shots to the picture gallery – the obligatory shots of the cat, and some of my sister’s Halloween costume for work (it’s awesome).
There are still pics from my big move to Arizona a few moths back, I’ll see about getting those uploaded too.
Happy Thanksgiving!
It would seem I jumped the gun a bit on announcing I would be offline indefinitely. An 11th hour reprieve was thrown my way by a dear friend, and my net access looks to be stable for at least another month or so.
I. Am. Very. Relieved!
Howdy All.
Unfortunately, my cable will be going dark on June 12th, and I have no idea when I’ll be able to get it back up again. This coupled with the fact that I may need to move as well means it’s possible I could be offline for as long as 2-3 months.
TheMook.Net site is still paid up until September, so it isn’t going anywhere – but I won’t be able to access it, so there will be no updates for a while, either to the site itself, the MookUI compilation, the Soldier of Fortune server, or anything else. Naturally you are all still welcome to use the message boards and anything else you want for as long as they are up.
Just a quickie today – I meant to post this before Halloween because it’s one of the coolest carved pumpkins I’ve ever seen (and I grew up in Salem Mass., arguably the Halloween capitol of the world, so I know of which I speak). Behold … the cylon jack-o-lantern!
There’s also a YouTube video of the pumpkin “in action”.
Not to be outdone, our very own Laid Back Assassin “|LBA| Baroness” created an “LBA” Jack-o-Lantern:
Sweeeeeeeet! Hope everyone had a fun and safe holiday.
Completely apropos of nothing whatsoever – I offer a silly picture I took earlier today:
This is the back of the heads of a couple of my buddies.
It’s been a weird day.
Wow, already into the second week of 2006! I’ve had plenty of introspective days and lots of fodder for writing, but so far I’ve managed to avoid actually writing anything – apparently I’m in ‘Vacation Mode’ still. And speaking of, I leave in just about 12 hours for a week long visit with my folks and sister, so I will be incommunicado until about January 20th – no Mook at The Mook.Net, no Scaramanga at the Kill-a-Rama, no Spyte at Argent Dawn, we’re all going to be away. I’ll catch up on the message boards and scores of email when we return, until then enjoy the new year and relentlessly pursue Truth.
Ugh.
I have been felled by the deadly disease I alluded to in “House of Plague”.
I have dubbed it “Explosivomirrhea” for reasons best not elaborated.
Woe to us all.
My niece was sick, explosively and projectiley (?) sick, from last Wednesday to about Sunday. Then my sister succumbed from Monday until Wednesday, fetal position and all. Last night my nephew got up at 2:00am to vomit prolifically on the kitchen floor.
It stalks me. I am not safe.
…
And now for something a little, but not completely, different:
Um…oops.
So, I got my latest games from Gamefly last week – “Shadow of the Colossus” and “The Matrix: Path of Neo“. I tried “Shadow” first, but I kept getting a ‘Disc Not Recognized’ error, so I set it aside and played “Path of Neo” instead.
Fast forward about a day and a half – by this time I’ve beaten the Matrix game (which was a lot of fun, I had a blast!) and am looking to move on. I check the “Shadow” disc – a few scratches but I’ve seen much worse. Try it again, still errors out; wipe the disc (remember kids! ALWAYS clean an optical disc from the center out, NEVER in a circle!), still errors out; blow a little into the Xbox to make sure there’s no wayward dust, still errors out; clean the disc with Windex, still errors out.
*Sigh* Okay, it’s rare, but every once in a great while I’ll get a bad disc from Gamefly (or Netflix) – disappointing, but I’ll survive for the two days it takes them to send a replacement. I go to the Gamefly site, I log in to my account, I choose “Report a defective disc” …
… and then finally notice that it is a PlayStation 2 game I’ve been trying to play in my Xbox.
DOH!
So I was watching “Grey’s Anatomy” last night (thus fulfilling my prediction of “in a few hours I’ll be lost in some vapid television show”). It’s definitely a show on my B-list (not an A-lister like Lost or Alias), but for what it is it’s usually enjoyable enough. Anyway, two of the doctors on the show were having a difference of opinion over the nature of reality – Yang is a classic “if I can’t see it, it doesn’t exist” rationalist, and Burke is of the “I’m not religious but I am spiritual” school of thought (which warrants an entire post on it’s own, but not now).
After a few exchanges on the subject the two of them find themselves dealing with a child in need of a heart transplant, and things aren’t going quite as expected, yada yada yada. Afterwards Burke explains to Yang (paraphrasing here): “That sense of powerlessness in the face of that boy’s troubles? That is why I have to believe in something beyond myself. If I didn’t, it would eat me alive inside.”
:: blink ::
What what what? That is the worst possible reason I can think of to believe in something – because it makes you feel better. What is he, 8 years old? Don’t believe in things because they make you feel better, or because your parents believed them, or because “all the cool kids are doing it”. Believe in something because you believe in something – that is, because you believe it is True, not because it gives you warm fuzzies.
I have been a Christian for roughly 22 years now – and I remain a Christian because I have spent countless hours in research and thought and examination, and firmly believe that 2000 years ago a dead man rose from his grave. (Naturally my faith and worldview encompass a great deal more than that, but without that starting point Christianity simply doesn’t stand).
Prior to that I was a generic sort of animist, with a wishy-washy belief in a very undefined “something out there” – because at that time I firmly believed that was the Truth of things.
Even before that, I was a secular humanist (though of course too young to know the term) – because at that time I had never seen or thought anything to make me think otherwise.
If I only believed in things that made me feel good, I would still be waiting on Christmas morning for Santa Claus to shimmy down the chimney with an Xbox 360 in one hand and a sixpack of Smirnoff Ice in the other!
